Ohio town wants to implement massive aerial surveillance program

Drones aren’t conducting surveillance 24/7 in the United States just yet, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about: in Dayton, Ohio, manned airplanes might soon do the spying.

Officials with the Dayton City Commission recently announced
that they hope to sign a $120,000 contract with a local security
company in order to give law enforcement agencies an eye-in-the-sky
ability unheard of elsewhere in America. While the Federal Aviation
Administration continues to ponder just exactly how unmanned aerial
vehicles or drones will be able to conduct surveillance in the sky,
sending manned aircraft through the clouds isn’t something that
involves as many hurdles. That will make it all the easier if
Dayton gets the go-ahead to sign-on to a pricey program being
touted by Persistent Surveillance Systems.

Persistent Surveillance Systems, or PSS, currently has
operations throughout the Dayton area in order to keep watch over
private property, like a downtown business park. If they sign on
with the city proper, though, PSS will be asked to send airplanes
in the sky to snoop on any seemingly illegal activity on the
ground.

To the Dayton Daily News, PSS’s Ross McNutt said the city would
be allowed to access a video camera feed from a piloted aircraft
that could be deployed to around 10,000 feet off the ground. PSS
would provide the city with the plane and the pilot, and with the
right know-how the police would be able to extensively monitor an
area as large as the city’s entire downtown.

According to a slideshow presented before the City Commission
earlier this year and since obtained by the American Civil
Liberties Union, Dayton officials are looking at more than just a
dinky plane outfitted with a couple of Kodaks. The city is
apparently pursuing a program called “Trusted Situational
Awareness,” which PSS says can collect real-time data and imagery
to law enforcement so the police can identify and interrupt illegal
activity while at the same time collecting “valuable forensic
intelligence.”

That right there was enough to raise a red flag with Jay
Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy
and Technology Project. After viewing the slideshow for himself this week, he writes on
his blog that signing on to the “Trusted
Situational Awareness” program could put Dayton’s population under
an ever present microscope.

“’Forensic intelligence’ usually means something like,
‘keeping records of everything everybody is doing so we can go back
and carry out retroactive surveillance whenever we need it,’”
says Stanley.

That surveillance would be captured by plane-mounted cameras
described by McNutt, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, as
being 10-times more sensitive that IMAX lenses. Should the Dayton
Police Department sign-on, the agency hopes to log 120 flight hours
with PSS this summer, starting with six months of surveillance at
the Dayton International Airport. If the DIA’s aviation department
thinks PSS helps get the area secure, $20,000 will be credited
towards the purchase of more equipment.

Trusted Situational Awareness in Dayton is important, says the
department, because it “can be utilized to prevent and minimize
acts of terrorism, crime and murder.” The ACLU warns that it
can do much more than that, though. “These planes are able to
monitor an area four times as large as Dayton’s downtown. The
rapid-fire cameras used on the plane make the captured data more
like film than still photos,” claims the organization.
“Police can zoom in on any part of the image, in real time. This
means that they could track your car down the street or watch you
swimming in your backyard.”

The ACLU is now asking for concerned citizens of Dayton to speak
up. The City Commission has decided to postpone any decision on the
proposal until a thorough public discussion is conducted.

"It's basically educating the public about what this
technology will actually do and what it can't do," Mayor Gary
Leitzell told Dayton Daily News after a February meeting. "I
think the public has a right to know, so they feel comfortable with
our choice of using technology to help our police department solve
crime and reduce crime."